David Brin - Glory Season

From the control room, she and Brod followed the main corridor as it climbed several more ramps and stairs, passing through a series of heavy, cylindrical hatches, each propped open with thick wedges to prevent accidental closure. At one point, the youths paused before a shattered wall that appeared once to have carried a map. A portion was still legible in the lower left, showing a corner of the convoluted outline of Jellicoe Island. The rest of the chart was burned so deeply that not only the plaster was gone, but the first centimeter or so of rock.

“That’s okay,” Maia told Brod. “Come on. This must be the way.”

There followed more stairs, more wedged blast shields, before the hallway terminated at a closed set of rather-ordinary-looking steel doors. A button to one side came alight when Maia pressed it. Soon, the aperture spread open with a faint rumble, revealing a tiny room without furniture, displaying an array of indicator lights on one wall.

“Well, I’m tied down an’ Wengeled,” Brod exhaled. “It’s a lift! Some big holds in Joannaborg had ’em. I rode one at the library. Went up thirty meters.”

“I suppose they’re safe,” Maia said, not stating it as a question, since there was no point. She did not like there being only one entrance or exit, but the two of them must use the conveyance, safe or no. “I’ll leave it to your vastly greater experience to pilot the smuggy thing.”

Brod stepped inside gingerly. Maia followed, watching carefully to see how it was done. “All the way to the top?” the boy asked. She nodded, and he reached out, extending one finger till it touched the uppermost button. It glowed. After a beat, the doors rumbled shut.

“Is that all there is to it? Shouldn’t we—”

Maia cut off as her stomach did a somersault. Gravity yanked her downward, as if either she or Stratos had suddenly gained mass. There are advantages to not having eaten, Maia thought. Yet, after the first few seconds, she found perverse pleasure in the sensation. Indicators flickered, changing an alphanumeric display that Maia couldn’t read because the bottom half had gone dead. What if another, more critical part fails while we’re in motion?

She quashed the thought. Anyway, who was she to question something that still worked after millennia? The passenger, that’s who I am!

There came another disconcerting-exciting sensation. The pressure beneath her feet abruptly eased, and now she felt a lessening of weight. An experience not unlike falling or riding a pitching ship-deck down a swell. Or, Maia supposed, flight . Involuntarily, she giggled, and slapped a hand over her mouth. The other hand, she discovered, was wrapped tightly around Brod’s elbow. “Ow!” he complained succinctly, as the elevator car came to a halt and they both stumbled in reaction.

The doors slid apart, making them blink and shade their eyes. “Will they stay open?” Maia asked hastily, while staring onto a stony plateau capped with a fantastic, cloud-flecked sky.

“I’ll wedge my sandal in the door,” Brod answered. “If you’ll let go of my arm for a minute.”

Maia laughed nervously and released the boy. While he secured their line of retreat, she stepped further and regarded a vista of ocean surrounding the archipelago known as the Dragons’ Teeth. Sunlight on water was just one sparkling beauty among so many she had not expected to see again. Its touch upon her skin was a gift beyond words.

I knew it! The military clans from Caria wouldn’t arrive by boat. They’re too high-caste, too busy. Besides, they wouldn’t risk someone seeing them, and noticing a pattern. So they come here only rarely to train, and only by air.

The flat surface extended several hundred meters to the south, west, and east. Here at the northern end of the plateau, the elevator shed sheltered machinery that included a substantial winch, probably for tethering and deploying dirigibles. Maia also noted huge drums of cable.

The Dragons’ Teeth were even more magnificent when seen from above. Tower after narrow stony tower stretched into the distance, arrayed like staggered spikes down the back of some armored beast. Many bore forested tips or ledges, like Grimké, while others gleamed in the afternoon sunshine, bare and pristine products of extruding mantle forces that long predated woman’s tenure on Stratos.

No tooth in sight reached higher than this one, at the northern edge of Jellicoe. Because of its position, she couldn’t see due south, where lay other giant island clusters, such as Halsey, the sole site officially and legally inhabited. No doubt the war clans counted on this shielding effect, and timed their rare visits to minimize chances of being seen. Still, Maia wondered if the men who staffed Halsey ever suspected.

Perhaps that’s why they rotate the station assignment among low-ranked guilds. Less chance of a rhythm being noticed, even if men did happen to spy a zep, now and then. Especially with visits only three times in a lifetime.

She turned and marched to the right, where more than two score monoliths could be seen clustered close at hand—some of the many peaks which, welded together, made Jellicoe the chief molar of this legendary chain of Teeth. When Maia got close enough to see how vast the collection was, she realized how even the extensive tunnel network below could easily be hidden in this maze of semicrystalline stone.

Maia had to descend a rough, eroded staircase in order to reach a lower terrace, and then crossed some distance before at last nearing the vista she wanted. Brod cried out for her to wait, but impatience drove her. I’ve got to know, she thought, and hurried faster.

At last, she stopped short of a precipice so breathtaking, it outshadowed Grimké as a gull might outsoar a beetle. Her pulse pounded in her ears. So good was it to be in open air, breathing the sweet sea wind, that Maia forgot to experience vertigo as she edged close and looked down at Jellicoe Lagoon.

The anchorage already lay in dimness, abandoned by the sun after a brief, noontime visit. Her gaze bypassed still-bright stony walls, readjusting until at last she found what she had hoped to see. Two ships, she realized with a thrill. Reckless and Manitou.

I was afraid they’d change hideouts. They should, since their ketch was captured. Maybe they’re planning to, soon.

Maia realized, with not a little disbelief, that the escape from Grimké with Brod and Naroin and the others had only been three or four days ago. That may mean we still have time.

She felt Brod’s presence as he came alongside, and heard his ragged sigh of relief. “We’re not too late, after all.” He turned to regard her, a glitter in his eye. “I sure hope you’ve got a plan, Maia. I’ll help rescue your starman, and your sister. But first, there’s a band of unsuspecting reavers down there with a pantry to raid. If I don’t get food soon—”

“I know,” Maia interrupted with a wave of one hand, and quoted,

Brod grinned, showing a lot of teeth. When he spoke, it was in thick dialect.

“Aye, lass. Ye don’t want me reduced to bitin’ the nearest thing at hand now, do ye?”

She laughed, and so did he. Such was her trust in his nature and friendship that it never occurred to Maia, as it might have months earlier, to take him at his literal word.

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Maia lowered her sextant and peered at the little calibrated dials a second time. The horizon angle, where the sun had set, fixed one endpoint. The other, almost directly; overhead, fell within the constellation Boadicea.